Mid-Michigan voters being hounded by "robo-texts" - ABC 12 – WJRT – Flint, MI

Mid-Michigan voters being hounded by "robo-texts"

(02/23/12) - Some local voters say they're fed up with this campaign cycle. They've been receiving political "robo-texts" on their cell phones, and they want them to stop.

Political robo-calls have been around for a while. They're phone calls -- usually with a recorded message -- asking for support for a political candidate or ballot issue. But now, these unwanted solicitations are popping up in the form of text messages on cell phones.

"It's actually quite an irritation," said Luke Walworth of Flint, who was unpleasantly surprised to get a text the other day that said "Romney's Poor Comments." 

The text included a phone number with a 989 area code. Walworth realized it was a political robo-call in text message form.

"To me, they're wasting their time and doing nothing but losing votes," Walworth said.

We called the number and got a recorded message that's clearly anti-Romney, but doesn't say who's behind it.
    
The text message came from an e-mail address -- michigan@westcoastrepublicans.com. We searched the domain name, and found out it's registered to "Domains By Proxy, LLC," which allows the owner to remain anonymous.

"I just decided that enough was enough," said Shaun Dakin, CEO and founder of the National Political Do-Not-Contact Registry in 2008 in response to political calls being exempt from the Federal Do-Not-Call List.

Dakin says political campaigns are able to get phone numbers from voter registration records. He suggests robo-text recipients complain to their cell phone carrier.

"The mobile phone carriers can shut [robo-texts] off really fast as opposed to robo-calls, and they have an incentive to do that because most people pay for the right to get text messages," Dakin said.

You can sign up for the National Political Do-Not-Contact Registry by clicking here.  However, it can only take effect if politicians themselves sign up agreeing not to robo-call or robo-text.  But so far, Dakin says no Michigan politician has done so.

You can also find out information about robo-calls at http://reverserobocall.com/